Meta

Vi

This month I’m not planning on writing anything huge. I’ve been extremely busy working on new music for Vi, so really I need to get back to it, but I will fill you in on what I’ve been accomplishing during the month of March. I’ve recently graduated to level four in my study of Liang Zhen Pu Baguazhang. I’ve also been keeping up with my Japanese language study on a daily basis–something that I let lapse last year. I need to continue staying vigilant in an effort to maintain my consistency with this. I’m currently still at a very elementary level but I’m starting to understand basic grammar. I just started prepositions this week. I also learned that Japanese is an agglutinative language. I’ve been pulling triggers in terms of the late gender transition game as well, taking care of various last minute consultations and long drives into Phoenix in order to tie up all my loose ends. I’m moving downtown next month which will afford me even greater opportunities for pursuing performing live. I would say the big thing that I’ve begun is a weekly stream which I’m calling “The Church of Satin” on Twitch. It’s been a really great experience for me so far. It’s something I always wanted to try. For the most part, it gives me a lot of time to schedule actual playtime so I’m not continuously fucking off by playing video games during the week. I have been slacking on my drawing lately–but the large majority of the time that I could’ve been spending on that has gone to writing music, so I can live with that trade off. I’ve been uploading some of my streams to my YouTube channel. I linked one of my latest streams below. I’m playing Yoko Taro’s crazy Drakengard 3.

I’m going to first start off by saying that over the last month I have been completely consumed by a project that needed to get done. I decided to buckle down and reduce my social media intake for the by 100% during this time. The result was putting the finishing touches on my Neon Metal project Virtual Intelligence’s “Singularity Now: The Future Worlds of Yesterday” album. It’s been over two years since I last released a new album so I felt it was time to get up off my ass and finish cranking it out.

What is Neon Metal?

A postmodern fusion of science fiction/future oriented electronica and symphonic metal. The process of writing Neon Metal begins either on a piano and/or in a digital audio workstation and adds additional live instruments after that first step. I chose the word “Neon” to describe Vi’s brand of metal as it is often paired with the cyberpunk genre of fiction.

Other bands and musicians have touched on this concept in the past. Pretty Maids’ song “Future World” and The Kovenant’s “Nexus Polaris” and “Animatronic albums come to mind as possible sources of inspiration for this–but in an effort to zero in on exactly what my music embodies I needed to find a term that can help to classify what I’m doing musically with Vi. I’ve always had a difficult time describing my music with Virtual Intelligence to listeners. I originally framed it to be an electronic only project, but after completing work on my “f AI t h” album in 2013 I began to feel as if adding a metal element would be beneficial to the overall feel of the music. I already had certain elements from Black Metal in my music, but it felt like something was still missing.

Make no mistake–Neon Metal is metal first and foremost. While Neon Metal may have elements of EBM or electronic dance music, trance, and sometimes no guitars at all, songs are written with a proclivity for arranging songs in a metal sense. As someone who grew up listening to the likes of Malice Mizer, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, Satyricon, Darkthrone, The Kovenant, Kraftwerk, and Sisters of Mercy writing songs in this way makes the most sense to me.

To see more about Virtual Intelligence pop on over to gothicelectric.bandcamp.com to give a listen to our mini album “Interface to God” and our first album “f AI t h.” There are also more details about our latest album “Singularity Now: The Future Worlds of Yesterday” arriving on 10/16.